US authorities released more than 300 inmates from the notorious Abu Ghraib prison on the outskirts of Baghdad yesterday, taking the number set free this year to 800, Iraq's Human Rights ministry said.

The ministry, which is involved in reviewing the cases of those being held at detention facilities in Iraq, said it expected more prisoners to be freed in the coming weeks.

More than 8,000 people are still being held at facilities in Iraq, 1,000 of them with charges pending against them in Iraq's central criminal court. The rest are due to have their status reviewed every 90-120 days.

"The release of 350 detainees this week further demonstrates our determination that every detainee receives full consideration of their cases and only those deemed true security threats to our nation are held in the internment camps," the ministry said in a statement.

Since the ministry joined a US-run board set up last August to review detainees' detention, nearly 4,000 prisoners have been freed from prisons in Iraq.

Most were rounded up during US military raids on suspicion of working for or assisting the anti-US insurgency. But many claim to have no involvement with militants and say they are rounded up randomly on little grounds.

In another development, gunmen abducted four Egyptian telecoms engineers in Baghdad yesterday, underlining the danger haunting Iraq's streets despite its faltering steps towards democracy.

The men were seized as they left their house in the west of the capital for work.

All are employed by a unit of the Egyptian firm Orascom, which has several contracts in Iraq.

The abduction came two days after the brazen kidnapping of an Italian journalist, Giuliana Sgrena.

An Islamist militant group in Iraq claimed responsibility for kidnapping the journalist and threatened to kill her by today.

(China Daily February 7, 2005)